The Yiyu (Beilu yiyu) – a Chinese-Middle Mongol glossary included in the Dengtan Bijiu (a military handbook for generals compiled during the Wanli period of the Ming dynasty) – is an important source regarding the history of the Mongolian language. The manuscript version of Yiyu is a copy made for Louis Ligeti on his first expedition to China (1928-31) and is now conserved by the Oriental Collection of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In his edition the author reconstructs the often chaotic material of the Yiyu with the help of other available Yiyu texts. Next to its contribution in transcription and reconstruction, this work is indispensable in terms of linguistic analysis, dealing with much investigated issues of Middle Mongol (e.g. suffixes, unstable -n nouns, representation of the initial h-, loanwords in the lexicon, lack or presence of intervocalic velar fricatives etc.). A full word index, a classical Mongolian reference wordlist and four other indexes are included in this edition as well as the facsimile photocopies of both the manuscript and a block print version of the glossary.

This unique, comparative description of the Hungarian, Habsburg, and Ottoman military frontiers in the fifteenth-seventeenth centuries provides fascinating reading to those interested in military history. It concentrates on the administration, finance, manpower problems, and aspects of the military revolution in the marches.

Professor György Kara, an outstanding member of academia, celebrated his 80th birthday recently. His students and colleagues commemorate this occasion with papers on a wide range of topics in Altaic Studies, with a focus on the literacy, culture and languages of the steppe civilizations.

An original new perspective on the shared history of Burmese, Chinese, and Tibetan, with a particular focus on their phonological development.

Empires and Exchanges in Eurasian Late Antiquity offers an integrated picture of Rome, China, Iran, and the Steppes during a formative period of world history. In the half millennium between 250 and 750 CE, settled empires underwent deep structural changes, while various nomadic peoples of the steppes (Huns, Avars, Turks, and others) experienced significant interactions and movements that changed their societies, cultures, and economies. This was a transformational era, a time when Roman, Persian, and Chinese monarchs were mutually aware of court practices, and when Christians and Buddhists criss-crossed the Eurasian lands together with merchants and armies. It was a time of greater circulation of ideas as well as material goods. This volume provides a conceptual frame for locating these developments in the same space and time. Without arguing for uniformity, it illuminates the interconnections and networks that tied countless local cultural expressions to far-reaching inter-regional ones.

TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS is a series of books that open new perspectives in our understanding of language. The series publishes state-of-the-art work on core areas of linguistics across theoretical frameworks as well as studies that provide new insights by building bridges to neighbouring fields such as neuroscience and cognitive science. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS considers itself a forum for cutting-edge research based on solid empirical data on language in its various manifestations, including sign languages. It regards linguistic variation in its synchronic and diachronic dimensions as well as in its social contexts as important sources of insight for a better understanding of the design of linguistic systems and the ecology and evolution of language. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS publishes monographs and outstanding dissertations as well as edited volumes, which provide the opportunity to address controversial topics from different empirical and theoretical viewpoints. High quality standards are ensured through anonymous reviewing.

In “A Russian-Yakut-Ewenki Trilingual Dictionary” by N.V. Sljunin, José Andrés Alonso de la Fuente offers the philological edition of a very early twentieth-century source of two indigenous languages from Siberia. This edition includes the facsimile of the original handwritten document. Whereas specialists have known about the existence of Sljunin’s Yakut data by indirect references to it in at least one standard dictionary, there was no available information regarding Sljunin’s Ewenki data. Furthermore, careful linguistic analysis reveals that the Ewenki variety reflected in Sljunin’s dictionary may have already dissapeared.